The English crime writer Caroline Graham was born on 17.03.1931 in Nuneaton, in the north of the British county of Warwickshire. When Caroline Graham was six years old, her mother died and so the girl was raised by her father alone in the following years.

At the age of fourteen, she left school and earned a living in different factories. From 1953 to 1955 she worked for the British Navy. After finishing her work for the Navy, she married and began night school with a degree in Theatre Studies at the University of Birmingham. She ran a marriage bureau and worked in the sixties for a theatre.

This developed into a journalism career for radio and television in the seventies, and in 1977 she wrote several episodes for radio plays and screenplays.

Since 1982, Caroline Graham has been writing novels, her most famous ones being the crime novels about the investigators in the fictional county of Midsomer, Midsomer Murders. The descriptions include the author's always certain amount of humour and her fine sense of the macabre.

Similar to Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime, the residents of the county show a facade of decency and kindness, behind which human abyss often hides, leading to the crimes described. The roots of these crime frequently extend far into the past. The detective goes about his work with wit and sensitivity, and can bring his skills to a successful conclusion with the help of these cases.

The author of Whodunit thrillers is helped by the fine English tradition of Village Mysteries, which also happen in small towns and lead to murder, manslaughter or extortion.

Although in 1982 she had written less successful children's books and crime novels, her first book about the British investigators Inspector Barnaby, The Killings at Badger's Drift, was published in 1987. The British Crime Writers Association (CWA) chose this book among the 100 best crime novels and in 1989 the novelist was awarded the Macavity Award, the American literary prize for crime fiction.

Compared with private investigator Magnum, Leroy Jethro Gibbs and the German Commissioner Julia Durant, Inspector Barnaby investigated in Caroline Graham's books in a quiet, almost old-fashioned-looking world. Much like Donna Leon, Caroline Graham decorates her rural area with a lot of local characteristics.

From 1997, her books have been filmed by the BBC. The Killings at Badger's Drift were broadcast as a pilot on 23 March 1997 by the British channel ITV, and since then the series has been running with great success not only in the UK but also in many other countries. Caroline Graham has even written the script for one of the first episodes of the series.

Caroline Graham lives in Suffolk, England.

Books about Inspector Barnaby

The Killings at Badger's Drift

Requiem for a Killer

A Bad Ending

Absolute beginners

Faithful unto Death

A Safe Hiding

Only Those Who See the Truth